Therefore I am more comfortable buying something that, while not the fastest in the world at topping benchmarks, is plenty fast enough (faster than anything Apple ever made pre-M1 which many users still use just fine), fits my needs better, is easier to repair/upgrade, and as an added bonus, is significantly cheaper than an M1, so I can take the difference in money I would have spent on an M1 and buying into the Apple ecosystem and put it into Apple stock and I'd be even better off in the long run :)) Everybody wins.

This is solved by the M1, that’s all I say. Your laptop is still much more expensive than a significantly better desktop PC.

Online reviews show multiple laptops with near full-day battery life (>8h) exist if you do some googling, so that's almost a non-issue ATM if that's your main concern.

>Your laptop is still much more expensive than a significantly better desktop PC.

Of course it is, but so what? I need a laptop, not a desktop.